


Be Good, Johnny

by lialyn2



Category: The Dark Knight Rises
Genre: Anger, Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Homelessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lialyn2/pseuds/lialyn2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is a journey; his is marked with anger and intertwined with Bruce Wayne's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Good, Johnny

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [hc_bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) square “loss of home/shelter.”
> 
>   
> dedicated to JGL’s face.   
> 

Channel your anger, they say. How about sports, or exercise? How about counting to ten? And he hears the same lines from different people. Over, and over, and over again.

He could count to a million, and that itchy, resentful rage would never fizzle out.

So he doesn’t channel his anger, but masks it. He recognizes the same mask on Bruce Wayne’s face the day he visits the boys’ home.

◊

Eighteen years old, and he’s gotten good at putting on a smile, but now he’s out on the streets with not even a mirror to practice into anymore. Oh, he’s run away before – his is not that original of a story, not yet – but this time he is literally on his own, no foster parents or system or even boys’ home to fall back on. There’s nothing to be done for him now.

And he hates, hates, hates every second of the rain dripping down on him during the dark Gotham evenings, the scornful look each passerby shoots at that kid on the street who _doesn’t have a job and is probably into trouble_ – he hates life on the sidewalks.

Can he handle a whole life of this? Penniless kids are pitied, but penniless men are reviled.

He thinks about the sewers. They’re not appealing.

He thinks about a job. That doesn’t seem possible.

He remembers Bruce Wayne, and realizes that the things he’s done as Batman could never have seemed possible to many around him.

◊

He changes his name and puts on a smile: a dutiful one, for good measure. He works his first couple of legitimate jobs and enrolls in Gotham Central Community College, and a few years later, he applies to the GPD when there’s a window. It’s miraculous, but he gets the job. He passes everything the academy throws at him and _needs more_ , like this success could be a justification of his presence on earth or something equally as absurd. Like it’s not the anger pushing him, it’s a desire to do _something_.

Point is, he has a _life_ to live, and living it’s worth more than just harboring decades-old rage.

His first week on the force, he drives his squad car down to the slums he used to frequent as a kid with no home. It’s closure, it’s a new chapter, and it’s that moment when he swears to himself that his childhood was not for nothing. He’s going to bring another perspective to the GPD, and he’s going to fight with his _life_ for the right of the kids in the boys’ home now to grow up in safety and find lives of their own.

◊

He mentally goes back to his days on the street every now and then and marvels at how far he’s come. He could never have healed himself; it’s the city that’s given him a reason to be and good to do. He used to despise Gotham’s streets, but now he has a fierce desire to protect them. (He wants to protect the young ones who should never have to live like he did – to protect the wounded ones who should never have to face anything like Bane’s liberation of terror ever, ever again.)

He’s finally found a cause he believes in, the same cause that the Batman stands for. And through that reason to be…he’s not so angry anymore.


End file.
